How IoT will be the ‘Enabler of Everything’ in Networks and Devices of Tomorrow

By Zia Askari | TelecomDrive.com

As the technology world is moving beyond connected computing and sensor driven smart devices – Internet of Things or IoT is going to hold the key towards being a next generation applications and services ‘enabler of everything’ as far as future networks and devices are concerned.

Welcome to the Internet of Everything era! With boundless potential to drive economic growth and improve people’s lives worldwide, the IoT as an enabler of Everything is still in its infancy, but definitely one of the most promising developments in technology that can define future implications of technology intertwining – applications, services and processes.

Mahesh Lingareddy, Co-Founder and CEO, Soft Machines explained, how IoT will be at the helm of future technology agenda. “The first wave was PC, desktop, the second wave is your smartphones and the third wave is your IOT which is essentially sensors, robotics, making them autonomous, artificial intelligence, they are making decisions for you, what website you see in morning, the weather, the television shows you watch etc so it can actually schedule optimal traffic.

To me 20 years from now one way to address the traffic congestion that everyone is scheduled. Self-driving car, speed is set everything is dynamically controlled. That’s one way to optimize a lot of congestion. This is one way you can solve the problems.” He added.

Speaking about how Soft Machines is looking at the IoT space, he said, “We are thinking about building brands, building technology and products. The IoT wave gives you a perfect launch platform for you to let innovation and innovative products, ride the IOT wave. This is a huge opportunity for any brand to build products. But there are lot of challenges. I call it lack of innovation infrastructure, lack of risk capital, investment is not available.
In soft machines when we started off with our operations in Hyderabad. I believe there are opportunities around these IOT wave, more sophisticated devices, more connected, more sensors, highly connected, provide useful information to users but products driven.”

IoT – all about Smart Devices, Smart Services

Driven by smart sensor based device ecosystems, Internet of Things will be in an ideal position to not only enable smart device connectivity but also link services around devices and create unique business models.

“In an IoT era, lot of it would be the services and support that’s the differentiator. The device is just an interface to the actual content and services. Today I want Uber or taxi, whether I am on iPad or iPhone, I can order Uber services. So we are focused on building a platform where we are focusing on building products, innovation so it will need patience. You have to build up the team, the product pipeline that’s where we are focused now,” he added.

Speaking about the investment plans – Mahesh said that to build this kind of product focused company in IOT space, one needs several hundred people and ten to $100 million. “This is a challenge, raising that kind of capital and putting a team together then asking them to be patient for 3-4 years to develop innovation and bring it to market, so that’s a challenge. It’s changing. Lot of focus from government is on manufacturing and it’s more visible but in long term do you want to create Apples of the world or Foxconn of the world,” he adds on.

“To me, IoT is like an ocean of opportunities in service and content level. Smart cities, smart parking its everywhere, its opportunity for tons of companies because projected volume PC is 100 million units, smartphones around billion units so there are opportunities for companies to reinvent themselves or for some new brands to come up. It’s anybody’s game there is no established kind of IoT brand, 3-5 yrs from now you will see few dominant brands emerging from this raise, couple of them could be existing brands and some of them could be new ones. So I think that where our focus is, is there an opportunity to create a brand or brands riding this wave and solving all these challenges,” he explained.